57. Now in this short passage our fisherman hath barred the way of all heresy. For that which was “in the beginning” is not comprehended in time, is not preceded by any beginning. Let Arius, therefore, hold his peace. The Arian teaching concerning the Son was—ἦν ποτε ὅτε οὐκ ἦ “There was a time when He was not.” This, St. Ambrose says, is irreconcilable with St. John’s ἐν ἀρχῆ ἦν ὁ λόγος. “The Word was ‘in’ or ‘at the beginning.’” Moreover, that which was “with God” is not confounded and mingled with Him, but is distinguished by the perfection unblemished which it hath as the Word abiding with God; and so let Sabellius keep silence. Sabellianism reduced the distinction of three Persons in the Godhead to a distinction of several aspects of the same Person. They did not “divide the substance,” but they “confounded the Persons.” And “the Word was God.” This Word, therefore, consisteth not in uttered speech, but in the designation of celestial excellence, so that Photinus’ teaching is refuted. Furthermore, by the fact that in the beginning He was with God is proven the indivisible unity of eternal Godhead in Father and Son, to the shame and confusion of Eunomius. Non in prolatione sermonis hoc Verbum est. That is to say, the Divine Word or Logos was not such in the sense of λόγος προφορικός—i.e. uttered spoken word, and so a creature, but rather in the sense of λόγος ἐνδιάθετος—the inherent eternal object of the Divine Consciousness. Cf. Eunomius (v. s. § 44), was a leading Arian teacher. The argument levelled against him here would also have been fitly directed against Arius himself. Lastly, seeing that all things are said to have been made by Him, He is plainly shown to be author of the Old and of the New Testament alike; so that the Manichæan can find no ground for his assaults. The heresy of Manes or Mani made its first appearance in Persia, in the reign of Shapur I. (240–272 a.d.). According to the Persian historian Mirkhond, Mani was a member of an ancient priestly house which had preserved the holy fire and the religion of Zoroaster during the dark age of Parthian domination. He attracted the notice of Shapur by pretensions to visions and prophetic powers, and sought to establish himself as another Daniel at the Persian Court. When the king, however, discovered Mani’s hostility to the established Zoroastrianism and the Magian hierarchy, the prophet was obliged to flee. Northern India appears to have been Mani’s refuge for a season, and thence, after some years of retirement, he reappeared, with an illustrated edition of his doctrines, composed and executed, as he said, by divine hands. Shapur was now dead and his successor Hormuz (272–274) was favourably disposed to Mani. But Hormuz only reigned two years, and was succeeded by a king who was a sworn foe to the new doctrine. Mani was challenged to a public disputation by the Magi. The king presided, so that Mani doubtless knew from the first what the issue would be. He was flayed alive, but he left numerous converts, and his death, which cast a certain halo of martyrdom around him, and their sufferings in persecution, really proved—as in the case of Christianity—conducive to the spread of Manichæan doctrine. The fundamental principle of Mani’s system was Dualism—the opposition of mind and matter, and the hypothesis of two co-eternal co-existent powers of good and of evil. In opposition to the Divine Essence, the Good Principle, was placed uncreated Evil, and thus the problem of sin and evil was solved. The purposes of creation and redemption were, in the Manichæan view, entirely self-seeking on the part of the Deity. The world was created by God, not out of free love, but out of the wish to protect Himself against evil, embodied in matter, which in its essence is chaotic. Redemption was the rescue of particles of the ethereal Light, buried amidst the gross darkness of matter, and yet leavening and informing it. Christ was identified with the Divine Principle and the sufferings of His members, the particles of divine Light buried in matter, were the Crucifixion, thus represented as an age-long agony. Jesus Christ was “crucified in the whole world.” Mani adopted the story of Eden, but he represented the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge not as the cause of Man’s fall, but as the first step in redemption, for Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament, was not the true God, but the evil Demon, from whose tyranny man had to be rescued. In order to attain salvation, the body, material and therefore essentially evil, must be mortified and starved. Man really fell when Eve tempted him to indulge fleshly lust, not when he ate the forbidden fruit. The stricter sort of the Manichæans practised a severe asceticism, abstaining from flesh meat and marriage. They would not even grind corn or make bread, for in grain there was life—i.e. an emanation of the Divine Light—though they would eat bread, quieting their conscience, however, by saying before they took it, “It was not I who reaped or ground the corn to make this bread.” At the end of time they held the world was to be destroyed by fire, but matter being, on the Manichæan hypothesis, eternal, the proper inference appears to be that the conflict of Light and Chaotic Darkness would recommence, and proceed usque ad infinitum. The Manichæan system was a strange eclectic farrago, embodying, in chimerical monstrosity, features of Zoroastrianism, Judaism (in so far as the story of Eden was taken over), Gnosticism (appearing in the theory that Jehovah was the Demon and that the eating of forbidden fruit did not cause the Fall), Christianity, and Pantheism (the last, doubtless, an importation from Hindostan). The disciples of the school made their way into the Roman Empire, and we find them, 150 years after the death of Mani, opposed by Augustine of Hippo, who indeed had at one time actually numbered himself amongst them. Thus hath the good fisherman caught them all in one net, to make them powerless to deceive, albeit unprofitable fish to take.